


There are Five Lights

by fresne



Category: Othello - Shakespeare
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Brainwashing, Crueltide, Dark, Misses Clause Challenge, Other, Other Shakespeare Play, POV Female Character, Psychological Torture, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture, Yuletide 2014, Yuletide Treat, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:25:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2841260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The very first thing that Iago said to Emelia after they were wed was, "The sun is shining very brightly in the sky." </p><p>As this was their wedding night, she replied, "What do you mean? That is the moon and stars. It's dark out." </p><p>Emelia didn't know to shiver then when Iago stroked her cheek and said, "No, My Love, it is the sun." </p><p>Then again, she hardly knew the man to whom she'd been wed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There are Five Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thinkatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkatory/gifts).



> Hope that this what what you were looking for given the turn it took.

The very first thing that Iago said to Emelia after they were wed was, "The sun is shining very brightly in the sky." 

As this was their wedding night, she replied, "What do you mean? That is the moon and stars. It's dark out." 

Emelia didn't know to shiver then when Iago stroked her cheek and said, "No, My Love, it is the sun." 

Then again, she hardly knew the man to whom she'd been wed. 

She'd been the sort of girl accounted a virago growing up, which was to say she told people who were fools that they were fools. That though she was pretty enough, she wore clothing that denied that prettiness, because if that was all she'd be allowed to be, then she'd reject appearance entirely. 

As a girl, Emelia was constantly recounted the tale from Boccaccio or some such about the maiden forced to run from the hounds of her hellish lover for all eternity for the horrible sin of rejecting him. As if that would get her to not speak her mind and rage at the fate that being a woman had given her.

Then again, when her Father all but forced her to wed Iago, she hadn't known better than to drop her guard with the stranger who seemed to want her, and say yes. If she had one moment in which to stop what happened, it was that one yes. Otherwise, as she later understood, it was entirely out of her hands.

Iago took her from her home to his. That was normal for a bridegroom. He took her from her town and village to a new country where she did not speak the language.

That he ripped her clothes off her back saying, "These are not nearly enough good enough for you, My Love," was unusual for a new bridegroom to say the least. That as she stiffened her back preparing to resist him, he did nothing was not the usual thing at all. He seemed entirely uninterested in her naked body, other than preventing her from covering it, or huddling near a fire, or for that matter building a fire in the empty fireplace. He would say, "It is sweltering hot, My Love," and throw water on her naked body, smiling as she shivered.

That he placed plate after plate of food before her and smashed them from her hand before she could eat them saying, "Oh, no, My Love, that is not good enough for you." 

That as she blinked with weariness at their bedside, he had their servants clang loud noises, saying, "But My Love, the sun is up in the sky. This is not the time for sleep." 

When finally, he let her slip into the dream of sleep, he woke her again some hour later throwing water on her face saying, "My Love, wake up. The sun is high in the sky. Now is not the time for sleeping."

Until finally, hungry and weary, she'd looked up at the sky and perhaps she had seen the sun because the sun had risen, or perhaps because it had been days since she slept she saw the sun. She'd stumbled to her feet. "Yes, I see the sun."

"But no My Love, you see the moon in the sky," said Iago, "It is time to sleep." He'd thrown her back onto their bed and when she'd finished bouncing, he tied her down with rough rope that bit into her wrists as she struggled. "Now, My Love, you must sleep." 

Given that she'd gone for days without sleeping, it would be a simple thing to say she slept. 

More complicated to say that in the days and weeks that followed, she ate and slept upon his command. When he said he saw the sun, she saw the sun. When he saw the moon, she saw the moon, tied firmly to their bed. 

Not that he ever let her sleep terribly long.

At some point, it might have been spring, she could not be sure, he began unending foreplay with her. He would drag a peacock feather across her naked skin, for she was still not allowed clothes, and say, "My Love, you have no idea how I love you. I hate hurting you, but it is for your own good." A sensation that brought a terrible itching form of desire that he would escalate to silken cloths and sweet oils and nothing more. 

He pinched her with tiny clamps and said, "Now doesn't that feel good." He pricked her with needles. He pinched her with his fingers.

It came to be that what felt good felt bad and what felt bad felt good, or perhaps Emelia was merely tired. Sometimes he penetrated her with a smooth wooden device, but there was never any release in it. Finally, one day, he stripped aside his own clothes to reveal a woman's body concealed by doublets and codpieces. She inserted the wooden device sharply into Emelia and said, "What I'm doing to you now was once done to me. If by a less skillful artist." Iago slowly shifted the tool within Emelia. "Now, tell me what do you see in the sky out our window?"

Emelia blinked and could not tell if she saw the sun or the moon. She looked to Iago in desperation. "I do not know. What is the right answer, please tell me and I will say it."

"There," said Iago, "that wasn't so hard," and set to pleasing Emelia with the wooden device. Afterwards Emelia lay limp, and then she slept for a boneless long time. When she woke, Iago was once more dressed in his shape as a man. 

Emelia blinked and sat up and realized that she could move freely. She slowly stood up and said, "Iago, My Love?"

"Hmmm…" was his reply. "What is it, My Love?"

"Please, tell me, is the sun shining or is it the moon," said Emelia genuinely confused.

"Ah," said Iago taking a slice of apple, swirling it in honey and placing it upon her tongue. "That is the question." He held up a glass of sweet chilled wine to her lips and she gulped it down gladly. "The answer is it is exactly what I say it is. Now then let me tell you of the Moor, Othello, and how I've decided that I will unmake him, because I can." As she blinked at him, Iago took pity, "it is the sun, My Love, but My Love it is also nothing like the sun."

She nodded and listened to him explain about the man he'd spend long years ingratiating as a friend for the pleasure of destroying.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not quite sure what in your prompt had me thinking this. Perhaps it was the Stockholm Syndrome. In any case, I didn't want to give things away at the beginning by tagging with Taming of the Shrew.
> 
> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


End file.
